N.C. A&T conference highlights importance of breastfeeding to communities of color
By Jennifer Fernandez
The day before nearly 190 people gathered on the North Carolina A&T State University campus in Greensboro last week to take a deep dive into how to normalize breastfeeding in Black communities, nine students took part in a “white coat” ceremony.
They’re part of a cohort who will join more than 40 other people who have trained at what organizers say is the first lactation training program to be held at a public historically Black college or university in the U.S.
That historic step was taken four years ago by N.C. A&T, and the new students are a sign of progress in a field that has been woefully lacking in Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and Asian lactation experts.
Andrea Serano, interim executive director of Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere, an organization founded to address breastfeeding disparities in communities of color, was heartened to see the new students get the lab coats they’ll wear during their academic studies.
“With this field and how there’s still a lot of work towards diversifying the lactation field, to be able to see all the new candidates that are preparing to become colleagues in this work was beautiful to see, and I felt like it set the tone for the conference,” Serano said.
The next day, people from across the country — lactation professionals, maternal health practitioners and others involved in the breastfeeding and childbirth communities — gathered at A&T’s Extension and Research Farm Pavilion to discuss how to increase the rates of breastfeeding among Black mothers.
Even though breastfeeding is natural, it’s not necessarily easy. Lactation consultants help families navigate the challenges that breastfeeding can bring: treating sore nipples, getting the baby to latch on, finding the right position for the baby to nurse.
Nationally, only about 10 percent of all lactation consultants are Black, yet the number of Black mothers with new babies is much larger — 21.5 percent of all mothers in North Carolina in 2022, state data shows.
Janiya Williams
Janiya Williams, founder and executive director of A&T’s program, said there’s a constant need for more diverse lactation consultants like the ones who go through A&T’s program.
“It’s allowing members and patients in our community to see people who look like them doing this work,” she said.
Williams came up with the idea for a conference in 2021 when she was looking for grant money to support maternal and child health programming through the Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation. She included plans for a conference focusing on “Black and brown breastfeeding.”
The two-day Uplifting Black and Brown Lactation Success Conference on Aug. 8 and Aug. 9 was co-hosted by N.C. A&T’s Pathway 2 Human Lactation Training Program and Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere, a national nonprofit organization that focuses on normalizing breastfeeding in Black communities.
Participants came from California, Texas, Michigan, Georgia, New York and elsewhere, Serano said.
Janiya Williams (far left), speaks with panel members Jade Chiu, (seated, left) Kimberly Moore-Salas and Linels Higuera Ancidey on the first day of the Uplifting Black and Brown Lactation Success Conference at N.C. A&T State University in Greensboro, N.C., on Aug. 8, 2024. Credit: Jennifer Fernandez/NC Health News
Importance of breastfeeding
Research shows that babies who are breastfed are less likely to have asthma or type 1 diabetes, or suffer from ear infections or gastrointestinal infections. They also have a reduced risk of obesity and sudden infant death syndrome.
A 2004 study in Pediatrics found that “breastfeeding was associated with a 21 percent reduced risk of postneonatal death for all infants and a 31 percent reduced risk for Black infants.”
Breastfeeding is also beneficial for the birthing parent, reducing the risk of high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and breast or ovarian cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding of infants for the first six months before introducing nutritious complementary foods.
North Carolina is in the middle of the pack compared with other states when it comes to babies breastfeeding at any point through the age of 6 months.
For North Carolina children born in 2021 (the last year for comprehensive data), 60.3 percent had some breastfeeding at some point through 6 months of age, CDC data shows. That dropped to 38.4 percent by the time the child turned 1 year old.
The percentage of children being exclusively breastfed is smaller. Just under half of North Carolina babies receive only breast milk for the first three months. By the time babies get to six months, it’s a little more than a quarter who are being exclusively fed with breast milk.
Those numbers have increased in recent years.
Nationally, the percentage of babies who start out breastfeeding grew between 2004 and 2021, when it reached 84 percent.
In North Carolina, the percentage of children breastfeeding — whether just some of the time or exclusively — has climbed overall from 2009 to 2021. Any breastfeeding by six months rose from 40.3 percent to 60.3 percent during that time. The percentage of children who were only breastfed through at least six months rose from 13.9 percent to 28.3 percent.
Disparities in breastfeeding
Nationally, about 75 percent of Black infants are ever breastfed compared with the overall average of 84 percent, the CDC says.
It is imperative to get the word out to birthing people of color about the benefits of breastfeeding, Williams and Serano said.
“We know that Black and brown babies have the lowest breastfeeding rates, and we also know they have the highest infant mortality rates,” Williams said. “We know human milk has the ability to combat some of these things babies are dying from.”
Serano added: “There has been a standing almost 15 to 20 percent gap between breastfeeding rates for our community versus other racial and ethnic groups, and that gap has been persistent because of systemic issues.”
Andrea Serano
Serano said Black families don’t always get any consultation about breastfeeding while in their doctor’s office or hospital. The information they do receive may not be accurate or culturally centered. They may not have been adequately assessed. And often, Black families are encouraged to use formula, she said.
A CDC study released in 2019 showed maternity care facilities in areas with larger Black populations are less likely to offer lactation support following delivery. The study also found that Black infants are also more likely to receive formula without a medical indication than white infants.
A separate study in the journal Pediatrics found Black infants are nine times more likely than white infants to receive infant formula while in the newborn nursery.
While breastfeeding rates typically drop for everyone in the first few weeks after birth, the drop is much larger for Black babies, Serano said.
Her organization looked at the national Pregnancy Risk Assessment Measuring System and found that breastfeeding rates for Black families drop by 21 percent each week in the first four weeks after birth.
Barriers to breastfeeding
Jade Chiu, breastfeeding peer counselor with the Guilford County Health Department, talked about how lactation consultants need to be aware of their own biases when dealing with cultures different than their own, but also within their own cultures since there is so much variation within communities.
“There’s so much nuance and variation — even among the same nationality, the same ethnicity, through the same race,” she said. “So assuming … I feel this way doesn’t mean that someone else that’s from my community is going to feel the same way.”
Kimberly Moore-Salas, peer counselor and lactation educator with the Native Community Health Center in Arizona, shared the story of one patient who helped her realize how important representation is in this type of work.
The new mom was in the hospital, and someone had taken her baby. She pleaded with Moore-Salas: “Please don’t let them wash my baby. My baby still has her stardust on her body.”
“And that, like, resonated with me,” she said. “Because as Native people … we believe that we were born from the stars.”
Minority families face multiple other barriers when it comes to breastfeeding.
Linels Higuera Ancidey, a Ready, Set, Baby facilitator with the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, encouraged participants to always bring an interpreter when working with families who speak another language.
“Don’t use a husband [to interpret]. Don’t use the partner. Don’t use the sibling. Don’t, please. Don’t,” she said. “They need to, you know, share that moment with their loved one or the person that they’re supporting.”
Six in 10 mothers stop breastfeeding sooner than they planned. Myriad factors can affect how long someone can breastfeed, from issues with lactation and the baby’s ability to latch on, to concerns about infant nutrition and weight, to unsupportive hospital practices and policies, according to the CDC. Concerns about taking medication while breast or chestfeeding can also play a role, as well as cultural norms, lack of family support, unsupportive work policies and lack of parental leave.
The country’s history of enslaving Black mothers and forcing them to breastfeed white infants still resonates, Williams and others say. The demands of slave labor also prevented Black mothers from nursing their children. With generations being stripped of the ability to breastfeed, many Black folks today have relatives who either don’t have breastfeeding experience or do have a poor view of it.
Sierra Bizzell, a birth doula and certified lactation consultant who is studying to become a midwife, said that she often sees misinformation. Some mothers are dealing with pain, thinking that it is normal. Others are being told by a family member that they won’t be able to make enough milk and should just use formula.
Lately, she has been seeing a lot of anxiety from mothers about being able to feed their babies.
“I think it’s just, you know, too much information from too many different sources of people that may or may not be qualified to give this information,” she said.
“We need more education that comes from people that look like us, who can speak to these misconceptions,” Bizzell added, “because we were all raised in different places, but a lot of us have had similar experiences with the things that have been said to us and taught to us.”
The post N.C. A&T conference highlights importance of breastfeeding to communities of color appeared first on North Carolina Health News.
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